Without Aggressive Climate Policy, Nigeria Stands to Lose 11% of Its GDP By 2020- IPPAM

The Institute for Public Policy Analysis and Management (IPPAM) on Thursday predicted this, that if nothing done by 2020 in terms of putting aggressive climate policy in place, Nigeria stands to lose 11 percent of its GDP to climate change, to sustain the nation’s socio- economic development, there is a dire need for call for action to avert that.

Speaking at a one-day public policy roundtable series with the theme: “Climate Change, Livelihoods and Public Policy Responses in Nigeria”, Vice Chancellor, Alex Ekwueme University, Ebonyi, Prof. Chinedum Nwajuiba, said the country’s Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP) in some instances is inconsistent with Nigeria’s National Determined Contribution (NDC), which should be the pillar of sustainable development in the country.

According to him, “If the NDC is supposed to be the central pillar of Nigeria’s development policy as envisaged in the draft implementation plan, it seems to have a missing link between the ERGP and the NDC.

“The ambitions laid down in the ERGP cannot be met without due considerations of the impacts of climate change and its potential to retard or even stop any development effort in Nigeria.

“We don’t have a real policy in Nigeria, and I don’t know if we have a nominal or real policy, because policy has to be a real policy not nominal, which means you truly believe you have a document to guide you.

“Countries have policies which means there is a document somewhere that supposedly is a policy to guide, but practitioners don’t even remember that such a guide exists, nobody would still call that a policy.”

“Nigeria does not have one example of a policy document developed with rigour as regards to climate change,” Nwajuiba said.

Also speaking, Consultant of Clean Energy, Ishaku Mshelia, said one a recurring problem of most African countries, especially Nigeria, is policy inconsistency and an inability to put in practice and implement purpose-driven policies.

“If you look back into our rural communities, we would see that a building in the rural area is being taken over by erosion and you would see how they are managing. The developed world is not complaining about climate change, but only the developing countries because we have failed in this part of the world to rise.

“Developed countries are not bothered about agriculture because the agriculture is based on irrigation and if we have irrigation facilities scattered all over the country, we won’t be talking about drought in the north or flood.

“We have to come up with a strategy that is hinged on moving from the inferior stage we are to the superior stage we should be. Climate change impact is highly huge in terms of destruction of economic activities on the people. There is social dislocation – look at the IDPs, only God knows what they might be facing because of this economic dislocation,” he said